


Snowlight

by Rubynye



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Nonmonogamy, Other, Polyamory, Porn Battle, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 17:52:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1275535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Neal wakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abi z (azephirin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/gifts).



The first time Neal wakes up it's the middle of the night. A soft pink slice of sky shows between the curtains, Elizabeth's curled into his side, and Peter snores gently, lying on his front with his arm flung across Neal and his hand folded around El's just above Neal's hip. That's what woke Neal, the brush of sleeping fingers across the sweetly sore bruise from when Peter grabbed him with both hands and bodily dragged Neal where he wanted him.

It's a rush just to remember, let alone to have experienced. Neal smiles into the darkness, tucking his nose into the stubbly warmth beneath Peter's ear, tingling just a touch all over. In his still limited (five tries) but growing (three successes) experience they tend to like putting him in the middle, not least to touch each other across him. He stretches a little, leaning his cheek on Peter's square shoulder, tucking his arm around El's velvet back, and dozes off again.

 

 

 

 

The second time Neal wakes, he's rolled to his belly with El slung soft and warm across his back, her arms around Peter, her head on Peter's chest. They're so very married. Neal shimmies out from beneath her and slowly gets out of the bed, one leg at a time, thinking of how a cat would do it, unhurried velvety grace. Success: neither Peter nor El stir, even when Neal flips the blanket over them, even when he sighs just a bit at the curves and shadows of drapery hiding them. They're so beautiful together, Peter's cheek resting on El's sky-black hair, but the nighttime air's edged with chill.

Neal filches Peter's favorite bathrobe, immersing himself in its worn flannel softness as he tiptoes down the stairs, stepping with deliberate care, a sweet low burn deep inside him. The snow's still falling thick and white from a grey dawn sky, and Neal shivers a little, thinking ruefully of the warm bed he climbed out of.

Still, he has the opportunity for a surprise, and who doesn't love surprises? Angling a kitchen lamp before turning it on, Neal remembers how Peter and El surprised him last night. They must have discussed it, maybe even practiced, or maybe their long partnership supplied their smooth grace as Peter hauled Neal up over his thighs, as El straddled Neal and pushed down on his shoulders, her nipples brushing his chest like hot pebbles: they fucked him at the same time, pinning him to their bed with their eyes, trading breathless quips as Peter's hands spread over Neal's hip and El's belly, as they rode him together till he sobbed with pleasure, spread out before them.

The memory warming him better than any drink, Neal grins as he sets up the coffee and toasts a sliced baguette, makes up some dishes of butter and jams and arranges everything on a tray. The army-green thermos isn't exactly elegant, but it's safer than mugs as Neal flicks the lamp back off and carries the tray by the ambient snow-light. It's not the easiest, but he's taken harder walks, and when he finds El and Peter still sweetly asleep, exactly as he left them, triumph flares over deeper warmth.

His stomach does a grumbly shimmy, reminding him of baser needs, and he sets down the tray and crosses the room to kiss Peter's forehead and El's cheek. As he grumbles awake she scrunches her nose, blinking open those sapphire eyes, and asks, "Coffee?"

Neal really enjoys grinning this particular grin as he flourishes towards the breakfast tray.

 

 

 

 

The third time Neal wakes that day, it's to the soft depth of Peter's voice muffled through the wall, to Satchmo a warm lump atop his left leg, to pearlescent white light filling the air. Elizabeth's giggles filter through the wall, along with smacking kisses, then softer ones; Neal flings his arms out across the bed, wider than the one he has at June's, and thinks for a moment about Satchmo's collar a blanket away from his anklet, two of a kind.

Then he pushes up on his elbows, and Satchmo opens an eye, thumps his tail twice, and goes back to dozing with a deliberation that makes Neal laugh silently.

The shower starts, moist warmth tinging the air, and Neal stretches, extracts his leg from beneath the dog, and listens to footsteps bounce down the stairs. El's, he judges, which indicates his plan of action. She took the tray but left a cup on the nightstand, and the robe he borrowed earlier on the bedside chair; leaving the robe, Neal runs a hand over his just-shadowed chin and through his artfully disheveled hair, picks up the cup and another useful item, and skips down the stairs as loudly as he can.

"Elizabeth," he calls, "I think you left something." She steps out of the kitchen, dressed in a threadbare tee of Peter's which hangs to the rounded swells of her thighs, and her breath catches satisfyingly as she sees him standing there naked, holding her coffee cup.

Neal really enjoys, he has to admit to himself, the ways the Burkes look at him. He likes, more than he likes to, how Peter's eyes follow him covetously, how Peter holds him down and looks him over with triumphant glee, every time delighted all over again to have captured him. Elizabeth, meanwhile, scans Neal head to toe and back again, her gaze tactile as fingers. She looks at him like a gift of living art, her smile flashes bright and predatory and Neal's bare skin tingles against the air as he shivers with heat. "Aren't you cold?" she purrs, stepping up to him, taking the cup from his hand and setting it carelessly, somewhere, Neal doesn't hear it break and that's the last he thinks about it.

"Freezing," Neal agrees, holding himself back from lifting his hands, letting El tuck herself plushly to his front.

"We've got a nice warm couch right there." She sets her hands on his chest, spreading out her dainty fingers in a little push.

Neal holds his ground, though, for one more moment, as he frames Elizabeth's gorgeous face with his hands. "You left this upstairs too," he says as he presdigitates a condom packet from behind her ear, and it feels damn good to feel her giggle, to feel her fingers between his as she twines their hands and swipes the packet.

"Good thing you brought it down with you." She pushes harder, and now Neal walks backwards where she directs him, falls over the couch arm and catches El as she tumbles herself onto him. El strips off her tee with a hip-swinging shimmy that makes Neal gasp, grins regally down at him and kisses him like she owns him, which she does.

It continues to be a morning of surprises. Neal was thinking of naked make outs, of an snug and enlivening discussion of options, of getting his face between El's plush thighs, but she dents sparks into his lip with her little teeth, rips open the packet and rolls on the condom breathtakingly fast, wiggles up and plunges right down in the first hot tight bounce of a gorgeous gallop. All Neal can do is groan and clutch El's hips and match her pace as she whoops and rides him.

Peter's "Hey, Neal," echoes down the stairs and El laughs a moan and ramps it up, driving him into the cushions, pushing a hand up into her hair and arching to show off. Neal grins breathlessly and looks up, past El's bouncing breasts and exultant grin and flying hair, to Peter's stunned, wide-eyed face as he drops whatever he was carrying and just stares a moment. They're so gorgeously married.

Neal can't resist, he slides his hands up El's satiny skin, cupping the lovely weight of her breasts; Peter swears entertainingly in sibilant Cantonese and spiky Russian and lopes down the stairs, and El rocks down to kiss Neal showily, her eyes blown and shining. She winks at him and tosses her head up just as Peter rounds the corner and grabs her hair, just before he kisses her, sending a shudder through her that reverberates through Neal.

El grips Neal's shoulder and cups Peter's cheek, and Neal doesn't even bother with a quip they wouldn't hear anyway. He lets his hips roll and feels his nerves sizzle and just watches the passionate poetry of them kissing, until they draw back, gasping over each other's mouths.

Then Peter turns under El's hand, his eyes ink-dark, and shoves Neal further into the couch cushions with a hard, sweet, devouring kiss.

 

 

 

 

Some hours later, after sex and lunch and expertly skewering two episodes of _Antiques Roadshow_ while El laughed and Peter basked, Neal hasn't really moved from the couch. He wakes up stretched out on it, because little needles of snow are spiking into his face and shoulder and everywhere not shielded by the blanket.

"Ow," Neal complains as he shifts from asleep to awake and horizontal to vertical in the same .35 second. Peter just smirks and unfairly uses his extra height to keep shaking a mitten over Neal's head, sending sparks of ice down his back. "Ow! That's inhumane!"

"Let's go, Sleeping Beauty," Peter orders, finally ceasing the snowy assault, wearing way too many clothes. "Satchmo needs his walk. I even shoveled the front steps for you."

"You expect me to walk out your front door in that?" Neal tosses a disparaging hand towards the pile of Peter's clothes on the couch arm. "Looking like a refugee from Westchester?"

"They should meet your exacting sartorial standards," Peter says grandly, stripping off his mittens. "I had El pick them out."

Okay, point to Peter. Neal pretends to judge the clothes for another second, then starts pulling them on, socks and loose jeans and layered tees, and pretends he doesn't feel Peter's warm watchful gaze. "I still don't know. It's cozy in here. You going to warm me back up when I get back in?"

He pulls the second tee over his head as he says it, and comes up looking into Peter's easy smile and coal-hot eyes. "Yeah," Peter answers, deep and rumbly, as he tucks a hand behind Neal's neck, pulling him in for a plunging kiss that warms him to his toes.

Neal might sway a little, might swoon a deniable bit. He sees Peter's eyes gone unfocused for a few blinks as he pries his fingers off Neal, watches Peter's eyebrows sharpen as he shifts his grip to a bossy little push. "All right, I'm convinced," Neal says, trying for brisk and managing perhaps breathless, turns and grins back over his shoulder at Peter watching him as he scoops up the long-sleeved shirt and goes to whistle up Satchmo.

 

 

 

The last time Neal wakes that day is late that night, pressed to Peter's back, his cheek resting on Peter's dense-muscled shoulder. He drifts awake, warm and comfortable and just the tiniest bit scared by how good this all feels, even the anklet almost a pleasant weight. He lifts his head to watch his amiable hosts sleeping, and maybe to think a little about quite how cuddled up he's gotten to his handler, to Mrs. Suit naked on the other side. A breath passes, maybe two, and something glints in the gray dimness past Peter's far side, Elizabeth's bright eye.

Neal smiles at her, as honestly as he knows how, feeling more grateful than he should let himself, unable to inject wariness into his happiness. Her visible eye crinkles, and she lifts up just enough for him to see her whole face, her answering, welcoming smile. She reaches across Peter and Neal slides his hand up to meet hers, lifting up just enough to kiss her knuckles, to watch her eyes shine before she lies down again. Neal lays his head back down on Peter's shoulder, gives up thinking and just feels, Peter's steady breathing beneath his cheek, Elizabeth's fine fingers between his, the little dent on her fourth finger where her wedding ring always goes.

And that's how Neal settles back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> All Thanks To: [](http://cereta.livejournal.com/profile)[**cereta**](http://cereta.livejournal.com/) and [](http://tzikeh.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://tzikeh.livejournal.com/)**tzikeh** for the long-ago discussion which led to this tale.


End file.
